A truck hauling an Army tank from President Donald Trump’s sparsely attended military parade fatally struck a woman in Washington, D.C. on Monday night.
The accident occurred when an M1 Abrams tank that had participated in Saturday’s parade was being transported from a staging area next to the Lincoln Memorial to a rail yard in Maryland as part of a larger convoy, USA Today reported, citing an internal Army document.
The woman was reportedly alone when she died. No military personnel were involved in the accident and the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department found no evidence of criminal intent or negligence on the part of the truck driver in a preliminary investigation, according to USA Today.
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Police spokesperson Freddie Talbert said that officers who responded to the call just after 9:30 p.m. on Monday reportedly found “an adult female, unconscious and not breathing, suffering from life-threatening injuries.”
“Despite life-saving efforts, the pedestrian was pronounced dead,” Talbert noted.
The Daily Beast has reached out to the police department for comment.
Around 150 military vehicles, 50 aircraft, and more than 6,000 soldiers paraded through D.C.’s streets Saturday to mark the Army’s 250th anniversary and Trump’s 79th birthday.
However, it soon became clear that turnout for the parade—expected to cost up to $45 million by conservative estimates—was underwhelming, with videos of soldiers marching past rows of empty bleachers circulating online.
After first hailing his birthday parade as a “tremendous success” on Sunday, Trump appeared to show irritation over the limited turnout on Monday, rebuking weather forecasters for predicting rain.
Trump’s leading biographer Michael Wolff told the Daily Beast Podcast that the commander in chief is also “p---ed off” about the parade’s lax atmosphere, as he was hoping for a “menacing” show of force.
“He kind of reamed out [Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth for this,” Wolff said. “Apparently, there was a phone call, and he said to Hegseth, the tone was all wrong. Why was the tone wrong? Who staged this?” (The White House denied this, telling the Daily Beast that Wolff is “a lying sack of s--t” who “has been proven to be a fraud.”)
Although White House Communications Director Steven Cheung claimed crowd numbers surpassed 250,000 on X Saturday, independent estimates suggested the turnout fell short even of the initially expected 200,000, according to the Associated Press.
Trump’s long-sought military parade occurred the same day 2,000-plus “No Kings” demonstrations were held across the country. Data journalist G. Elliot Morris estimated that roughly 4 to 6 million people joined anti-Trump rallies, potentially making it one of the largest demonstrations in United States history.
